14 July 2013 12:00 AM

Would you be surprised to learn that I fund Labour? Well I do... and so do you

Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

What would happen if the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems went out on to the streets with collection boxes?

I’d be surprised if they got more than a few washers and quite a lot of rude expressions they hadn’t heard before.

Nobody likes them. Nobody wants them. They speak for no one and they have helped wreck this country for 50 years.

So why do they survive at all?
The world has just woken up to the secret tax on trade union members
(the ‘political levy’) which keeps Labour going long after most
reasonable people stopped being socialists.

Ed
Miliband says he’s going to get rid of it, but I think seeing will be
believing in this case as, if he does as he says, it’s curtains for
Labour.

But how many
customers and shareholders of various corporations know how much of
their cash is being quietly siphoned off to keep the Tory corpse alive?

Much more important, we keep them all going through taxation.

This is via the so-called ‘Short Money’ subsidy to Opposition parties, paid out since 1975.

Political leaders say they’re against state funding of parties. They’re lying. There is huge state funding.

While they privatised gas, power, telephones and the railways, and now Royal Mail, they were nationalising politics.

Lose and the taxpayer is robbed on your behalf by HM Revenue & Customs.

If you object to this, they say: ‘Why don’t you stand for Parliament yourself?’

To which I reply that MPs are not elected by votes but by money, and that as a result we have the best parliament money can buy.

This
is going to continue and it will take a political earthquake of fury to
change it. There’s no chance of that when you continue to vote for the
very people who rob and despise you. Stop it.

The dark side of the Flower Pot Men - coming soon from Hollywood

When I leaf through my ancient Letts
Schoolboy Diaries from the 1950s and early 1960s, I am appalled to see
how much tripe my parents let me watch on television.

It rolled over me in a great wave of drivel as I lolled, slack-jawed before the ‘miracle of TV’, as we then thought it was.

Just imagine, if I hadn’t suffered all
that brain damage in my tender years, I might be an intellectual now
and allowed to present programmes on the BBC.

I have some memory of the Lone
Ranger, and Tonto, though I mainly recall the music and wondering
crossly how that mask could possibly stop anyone recognising him.

Now,
like Superman, Flash Gordon and Batman, this piffle has been taken up
by Hollywood and turned into a portentous pseudo-mythical yawnerama
‘containing moderate violence and injury detail’, which certainly wasn’t
allowed in my young day.

Tonto
also now has a dead bird glued to his head, which makes him look like
Kaiser Wilhelm II on a bad day. Next – Hollywood examines the dark side
of The Flower Pot Men, with ‘moderate violence and injury detail’.

'Tough' Theresa heroically tackles the wrong enemy

The Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa May, has a tremendous spin doctor.

I know, I’ve met her, and she’s great at her job.

I’ve also met Mrs May. Oh dear. But the spin whirls on and on.

Last week she was garlanded for removing Abu Qatada from this country. That’s spin. She didn’t.

He agreed to go, voluntarily, once Jordan had changed its law to suit him.

And judging by the wolfish grin on his furry face as he arrived in Amman, he wasn’t that troubled by events.

Far
from standing up for our interests, Mrs May also last week voluntarily
submitted everyone in this country to the outrageous European Arrest
Warrant, when she could have kept us out.

Its
alleged advantages (most already available through ordinary extradition
treaties) are not worth the price demanded – allowing foreign courts to
order and enforce the arrest of British subjects.

So much for Mrs May’s triumph. I’d rather have Abu Qatada here and no European Arrest Warrant, given the choice.

But spin doctors are good at flagging up empty victories, and hiding substantial defeats.

They're right, jail is too cruel for murderers

The death penalty is far more humane than a long prison sentence. That is one of the best reasons for bringing it back.

I’m
sorry to say that the Court of Human Rights is correct in condemning
our policy of locking up heinous murderers without hope of release and
for so long they forget what they have done.

It’s incredibly cruel.

My solution, of hanging them by the neck until dead, probably wouldn’t appeal to them either.

But
penal liberals should study the appalling suicide figures in our
horrible warehouse prisons, which are full of crime and dope and
increasingly used to house those made insane by their own unchecked drug
abuse.

In the last ten years 724 prisoners have taken their own lives, 90 of them serving life terms for murder.

In
my view, these 90 were killed by penal liberals who didn’t have the
guts to execute them but were happy to let them die of despair. Is that
supposed to be civilised?

Optimists
who reckon we are having an economic recovery might like to consider
this fact. Roughly half the containers leaving the port of Felixstowe
each year are empty.

Why? Because we have no solid exports to match the imports sucked in by the cheap credit that keeps Britain alive.

A
significant share of those containers that are full contain scrap for
recycling. So this country hopes to survive in a harsh world by
exporting air and rubbish. Good luck with that.

I'm told it’s not true that if you boil a frog slowly it will sit there waiting for its doom.

But
if you debauch and demoralise a country bit by bit, you can certainly
persuade it to accept things against which it would once have revolted.

If
Labour had said in 1964 they were planning to have 180,000 legal
abortions a year – many of them repeat patients – and that their
policies would mean half of all babies would be born out of wedlock
within 60 years, would anyone have voted for them?

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Dear Peter,

Have you only just realised democracy is a farce....its only the political views of the corporations which count these days, and political parties are just the marketing mechanism for presenting the latest collection of puppets to the public.

Meanwhile you use every possible opportunity & gambit to promote the prohibition agenda, when their is no other policy in place today so blatantly corrupt, so hostile to the loss of liberty and so in tune to the whole militaristic, oppressive uncle, neo-colonial interventionist zeitgeist alive in the world today.

You're a confused man Peter. On the one hand you're a champion of liberty, while on the other you defend the most murderous, corrupt & socially destructive policies in place today. Hardly surprising for a man who writes for the most reactionary and backward newspaper group in the UK.

Paul P: By the way, just in case you really are as lacking in comprehension as your previous responses have implied, the relevant passage from your original post begins: "What level of non-innocence would warrant slaughter I wonder. Rather a pity that the mothers of genocidal mass-killers past could not have obtained abortions, but we can't turn back the clock... " Frankly, for me, someone who claims to see no connection between such sentiments and the notion of "pre-emptive justice" (referred to explicitly in my original reply) is not to be taken seriously. Either they are not very bright or they are being deliberately evasive.

Paul P: I take your latest absurdly evasive offering to be, amongst other things, an implicit denial that you suggested in your original reply to Mr Mike B (15 July 2013, 2.05 PM) that there was no significant moral difference between, on the one hand, killing the innocent, and on the other, allowing some to live who might one day grow up to be killers. If you did not intend to deny that this is what you said or implied, I fail to see why you continue to dodge the debate by claiming not to understand what point of yours I'm referring to. Assuming, therefore, that you are indeed suggesting that my version of what you wrote is false, I'm more than happy to have whatever readers remain of this thread decide who is telling the truth about the content of your post of 15 July, 2.05 PM.

(Mr Mike B has already very effectively refuted your claim not to bring religion into posts unless "baited" by believers, so I'll leave that to one side)

"As for your latest post addressed to me, given that you now concede that you do raise the subject of religion, other than when baited by believers, you surely must also concede that Mr. Colm's assertion that you do so is fact, not "opinionated rhetoric". "

Yes, yes, yes. Let's concede that shall we.

"You also concede that you were wrong in attributing religious motives to my views"

Yes, yes, yes. Let's concede that too.

Moving on...

"Incidentally, I do not understand your reference to Mr. Hitchens "baiting" anyone with his "atheism is a belief argument"."

Then you are new to this blog.

"If he is trying to do so, I find it singularly ineffective. If he wishes to say that my scepticism is a form of belief, I am supremely indifferent to the suggestion."

As are we all, but it doesn't stop Mr Hitchens.

Nevertheless Mr Hitchens does offer debate and you do not. In three or more posts all we know is that you are a sceptic (of what we don't know) and that you are against abortion because it involves taking human life. To all contrary opinion, then, you are "supremely indifferent" (if you'll permit an extrapolation - which inevitable error will no doubt become the subject of another half-dozen comments from yourself) after which announcement you just walk away. Why, if I may ask, did you come to this blog?

The chronology of this thread is becoming confused, owing to the delay between posting a comment and that comment appearing on the thread. My comment of 17/07 /13 @ 9.00pm was, of course, a response to yours of the same date at 3.01pm, not your later message.

As for your latest post addressed to me, given that you now concede that you do raise the subject of religion, other than when baited by believers, you surely must also concede that Mr. Colm's assertion that you do so is fact, not "opinionated rhetoric". You also concede that you were wrong in attributing religious motives to my views, and say, with a figurative Gallic shrug "What of it?" Well, nothing, beyond the fact of your concession.

Incidentally, I do not understand your reference to Mr. Hitchens "baiting" anyone with his "atheism is a belief argument". If he is trying to do so, I find it singularly ineffective. If he wishes to say that my scepticism is a form of belief, I am supremely indifferent to the suggestion. I think that he is wrong as a "faithful sceptic" is a classical oxymoron. However, the suggestion does not bother me in the slightest.

"I do not understand how you can infer that I meant taking human life is wrong in all circumstances, when I gave a couple of examples of exceptions to the general rule in the very same sentence as that in which I made the proposition."

You said this...

"I have already explained that I oppose abortion, because I consider it to be the taking of a human life."

....and this..

"I do not believe that anyone has the right to take human life, other than in exceptional circumstances (war or self- defence spring to mind)."

And so putting these together in the form of a tortured syllogism...

Abortion is the taking of human life.

The taking of human life is wrong except in certain circumstances, examples of which I gave.

Abortion is wrong except in certain circumstances, examples of which I gave.

So I ask you again: In which circumstances would abortion be acceptable. Please give examples.

"If there are no exigent circumstances, such as those I have quoted as examples, if the victim was an innocent, when would you sanction the taking of human life?"

The exigent circumstances you quoted you said were *examples*. An example is an arbitrary selection from a population. There are other *examples* , or there could be other *examples*, which had not sprung to your mind. In the case of abortion no examples had apparently sprung to your mind, but since the taking of human life is not wrong in all circumstances, it follows that abortion is not wrong in all circumstances.

So asking you yet again: In what circumstances would abortion not be wrong. Please give examples. If you consider abortion wrong in all circumstances because you believe the taking of human life to be wrong then you have to modify your "exigent circumstances" . You have to say that the taking of human life is wrong except *only* in circumstances of war and self-defence. If there are any other contingent circumstances then you have to include them in the suite of specifics. You cannot simply offer war and self-defence as *examples*.

If the taking of human life is wrong *except*, then you have to offer objections to abortion other than simply the taking of human life if you want to isolate abortion completely, otherwise you have to grant possible exceptions.

On the matter of announcing one's belief status before opinionating in a fashion commonly associated with religious opinion, I just think it saves a lot of wasted correspondence if one does. Taking your example of racism; if I opinionated in a manner commonly associated with racist viewpoints, I could hardly be surprised if my respondent thought me a racist.

Paul P: if you're incapable of understanding the very very obvious I'm afraid I have neither the time nor the inclination to tutor you. Just this once however I'll give it a go. You see the thing about comment forums is that if a contributor puts the name of another contributor in front of his own post and refers explicitly to the subject of the first contribution, it's safe to assume that he is referring to the first post as a whole. Hence my reply to your criticism of Mr Mike B's post on abortion - criticism which I found both bizarre and incoherent. Once again you have declined to reply to any of the points I made, preferring to take refuge in the feeble opinionated rhetorical device of accusing others of opinionated rhetoric. Stating that the principle that one is not guilty of a crime until one has actually committed it, may well be a "banality", but then I've always believed that eschewing commonplace ideas simply because they ARE commonplace is philosophically shallow and the infallible mark of the intellectual vulgarian. In any case, as was again very glaringly obvious, my point was something rather different: that it is a truly terrifying absurdity to imply (in however muddled a fashion) that there is no real moral difference between, on the one hand, killing those who have done no wrong heretofore, and on the other, allowing some to live, who might, just might, grow up to be killers some day.

I do not understand how you can infer that I meant taking human life is wrong in all circumstances, when I gave a couple of examples of exceptions to the general rule in the very same sentence as that in which I made the proposition.

I do not see why I should have prefaced my comments with a phrase such as "I am not religious, but----" That would be akin to saying "I am not racist, but---" and would place religiosity in the same category as racism. Perhaps you believe that this is where it belongs, but I do not share that view.

As for your comment that objection to the taking of human life is a "hanging" statement, let me turn the proposition over to you. If there are no exigent circumstances, such as those I have quoted as examples, if the victim was an innocent, when would you sanction the taking of human life?

"With regard to your latest reply to Mr Colm, you describe as "opinionated rhetoric" his contention that that you do, indeed, raise the subject of religion, other than when baited by believers."

Yes, probably I do. What of it?

"You raised the subject of religion and devoted most of that post to the topic, even though I am not religious and had raised no religious argument."

The excessively perjorative nature of your argumentation bore close comparison with that of declared religious objectors to abortion, and so I inferred that your objection, too, likely was religion-sourced. I was wrong, you corrected the misapprehension. What of it?

"Your posts do tend to support his (Mr Hitchens) view of the obsession which some non-believers have with the religious faith of others. You come across as a reverse missionary, someone with, dare I say it, an evangelical compulsion to spread the word of atheism."

This is a misapprehension which I shall l correct for you. I am a science-based atheist of a particular atheist stripe. To wit, a deistic God is a perfectly scientific hypothesis which, like many another scientific hypothesis, must be shelved until such time as evidence in support might surface and permit the formulation of a theory. That is all. A theistic God is a fantasy summoned by the human imagination in the service of knowledge because we are an evolved species with predilections rooted in our evolutionary past. That is all.

I am in no way "obsessed" with the religious faith of others. Religion as a topic is interesting insofar as it has been profoundly instrumental in the development of humankind for both good and ill. Anyone not interested in religion from this point of view is not interested in education. My interest principally concerns why humankind believes rather than what it believes in. The developing science of evolutionary psychology has been able to offer some interesting insights into this phenomenon.

I am not remotely interested in 'spreading atheism' on some missionary adventure. That is absurd. Rather it speaks to what I mean by being 'baited by believers'. Mr Hitchens is constantly baiting atheists with his 'atheism is a belief' argument, and generally I respond with 'anti-bait". Religion as a general topic I will discuss, or debate, at any time with anyone prepared to entertain discussion rather than evangelism, proselytizing, point-scoring or otherwise showing themselves to be overtly anti-atheist or in underhand pursuit of the religious agenda.

A final point is that I am not especially anti-religion, which I consider in this relatively benign, post-Enlightenment age to be a hobby enjoyed principally by piety Christians (confining the discussion to Christianity). Educators such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne and others will have come up against the dark side of even benign Christianity during their careers, but I am not an educator. In the case of Dawkins, Coyne, et al, anti-religion angst informs much or most of their atheism.

Very true. There is hypocrisy in certain conservative circles, most especially the neo-cons in the USA, who are very worried about the sanctity of human life except when that human life belongs to innocent Iraqi or Afghan civillians. Then they are just collateral damage.

Also, too many on the right hate abortion but glory in the death penalty. Surely a conservative - supposedly suspicious of giving the state too much power - should shudder at the thought of it either holding the casting vote on the life and death of its citizens, or granting that right to other bodies?

The liberal left is also very confused though. Remember during the smear-UKIP months leading up to the local elections in the spring we had a bit of a hoo-ha about one of their councillors who had apparently advocated the abortion of disabled foetuses? The liberal twitterati, anxious to have a pop at UKIP under any circumstances, excoriated him for holding this view whilst conveniently forgetting that had he expressed the diametric opposite opinion that no disabled foetuses should ever be aborted he would too have been shouted down by exactly the same people.

"I have already explained that I oppose abortion, because I consider it to be the taking of a human life."

Understood. You have made yourself clear on that point. The only point you haven't made clear concerns the apparent absolutism of "the taking of human life" - if you don't mind me inferring again. You might have said "the taking of innocent life" or "the unnecessary taking of life" and so on. You instead said "the taking of human life", so the taking of human life under any circumstances is wrong - is my inference.

"One does not have to hold religious beliefs to adhere to that view and you should not infer religiosity on the part of those who express such an opinion."

Indeed not, but you must be aware that in the overwhelming number of cases of objections to abortion, especially phrased in the pejorative manner in which you expressed your objection, the objections will be for religious reasons, and an initial deducing that that would be the case must be understandable. Most people knowing this full well will say something like "I'm not religious but.....etc etc."

If you are not religious and yet tendered an objection to 'the taking of human life' then the hanging nature of that statement begs the question why?, which you did not anticipate and for which you did not furnish an answer. In other words there's no discussion here. You just issued a statement.

You said that abortions were carried out on "an industrial scale" in this country and that this justified your "slaughter of innocents" aphorism. They, i.e. the 'slaughterings of innocents', of course are not carried out on an industrial scale, except perhaps in a strictly technical sense. The vast majority of abortions in Britain, about 80%, are carried out within a few weeks of pregnancy becoming known. Only 10% take place after 13 weeks and it's very rare to go the whole distance to the legal limit of 22 weeks, about the limit at which 1 in 25 women will miscarry naturally - or by Act of God if you are religious. Understood that you are not.

With regard to your latest reply to Mr Colm, you describe as "opinionated rhetoric" his contention that that you do, indeed, raise the subject of religion, other than when baited by believers.

Do you deny that this is the case? If so ,how do you explain the contents of your post to me of 15/07/13 at 2.05pm? You raised the subject of religion and devoted most of that post to the topic, even though I am not religious and had raised no religious argument.

I tend to disagree with Peter Hitchens when he refers to the fanaticism of new atheists. However, your posts do tend to support his view of the obsession which some non-believers have with the religious faith of others. You come across as a reverse missionary, someone with, dare I say it, an evangelical compulsion to spread the word of atheism.

Who said anything about rational? Is it not a reasonably well-known fact that if something is said often enough many people will take it for gospel? If not, why do advertisers repeat their message as often as possible? I'm not for a moment suggesting that people should not think more before voting - I'm simply saying that they don't. Whether inferring such people are fools, and attaching labels to them to that effect, will change that fact seems somewhat unlikely, and perhaps results in the regular frustration we see registered here concerning such people...

Alan Thomas: Not sure I agree that rational self-interest invariably governs the way people vote. I know plenty of folk who enthused about Blair, Clinton, and Obama, without knowing a thing about their policies on tax or anything else. Much of modern politics, it seems to me, focusses on cultural affiliation and ego-projection rather than pure materialist self-seeking. For example, the sort of middle-aged guy who likes Springsteen and REM will often vote for liberal left candidates regardless of what their policies are. In any case shouldn't we all have learned by this stage to take electioneering politicians' vows on tax with a huge bag of salt? As the Irish writer John Waters observed of journalists who denounce politicians for breaking their promises on the economy: "Just wait till they hear about Santa".

No, these are different things. By moral relativism I mean accepting within the broad meaning of morality an equality between versions of morality, usually culturally driven. Consequentialism simply informs a definition of right and wrong. If the consequence is good the action is right, and the converse.

".....and by 'moral objectivism' you mean moral absolutism."

Yes. But again the question is begged: whose absolutism?

Religious contributors to this site love to reference C S Lewis. In Lewis' Mere Christianity he assigns to Natural Law our facility of conscience, a primitive instinct which in intellectual times would be codified into the particularisms of right and wrong. Lewis naturally makes the leap to God in having had him create this Natural Law and buried it in the mind of man. Lewis was evidently ignorant of evolution by natural selection and the development of altruism on this account in the primitive era.

Lewis is incapable of differentiating between Nature's blind purpose - the survival of the human genus - and the desire of an individual within that genus for a happy, peaceful and rewarding life. Nature doesn't care how many individuals perish horribly at the hands of other individuals so long as enough of them breed and produce the next generation. So given that Lewis' Natural Law will secure the next generation, the problem arises as to how to get individuals to stop behaving like animals and form agreeable societies.

How then do we get individuals at the lower percentiles of conscience to behave other than as animals but who are also smart enough to realize that the question 'Why should I?' is infinitely regressive? The answer is to stop the regression. It must be stopped at a point unassailable by and impervious to 'Why should I?' Thus the inculcation of God into the cultural consciousness as the ultimate crack-stopper, as it were.

It so happens that within our nature we also have a survival instinct to believe danger is afoot without having direct evidence of the danger. This instinct plays well into the theme of an authoritative God who cannot be seen but whose influence is there to be felt. This is Voltaire's necessary God of moral absolutism. Naturally it is the Christian God Voltaire had in mind and not any of the Greek gods, the Egyptian gods or that of the Aztecs. But that's a different discussion.

"I myself don't subscribe exclusively to either view; consequences matter, as do principles. How one weighs them against each other is a moot point."

I can agree with this, but the point remains that, while the intellectualization of instinctive conscience provides the basis for practical moral utility, there is still the problem of legitimate authority once one removes an unchallengeable authority from beyond the challengeable compass of man. I think this remains a conundrum for secular moral relativism.

I have already explained that I oppose abortion, because I consider it to be the taking of a human life. If lives are taken on an industrial scale, as they are, through abortion, in this country, I do not hesitate to call that "mass slaughter". One does not have to hold religious beliefs to adhere to that view and you should not infer religiosity on the part of those who express such an opinion.

"Your absurd response to points you can't reply to is always the same: "present a case I can answer", etc., etc.,. My comment couldn't have been clearer, even if I say so myself,"

Your comment of the 15 July 2013 at 10:08 PM sentence by sentence.....

"Yet another interesting example of your deeply bizarre form of argumentation on moral issues."

Opinionated rhetoric.

"You, on the other hand, seem to inhabit a strange universe where Minority Report style pre-emptive "justice" is to be preferred."

Opinionated rhetoric.

"I hope it never catches on, though current trends suggest you're by no means alone in possessing a very tenuous grasp of the difference between the potential to commit a crime and its actual commission."

Opinionated rhetoric.

"By the way, for the umpteenth time, you refute your own hilarious contention that you never raise the subject of religion unless and until "baited" by believers. If Hitchens wrote a piece on the rival merits of lager and ale I have little doubt you'd find some absurd pretext to shoehorn the God question into the thread."

Opinionated rhetoric.

These are the only two sentences which amounted to a point....

"I should have thought it was obvious that anyone is innocent until they actually commit an offence. That at any rate is the whole basis of the law."

They were nevertheless banalities. Naturally someone is innocent until they actually commit an offence. In law they are *presumed* innocent until they are found guilty.

So back to the beginning you said....

"Yet another interesting example......etc etc.'

What was another interesting example? Which comment are you talking about?You didn't reference it. What was "deeply bizarre" about my argumentation. You didn't say. So I repeat; make a case, refute something, present an argument, then I can respond.

Paul P – 'Judging by the present mistake/non-mistake judicial trend there are way more actual murderers in prison than there are non-murderers in prison for murder'

Well, yes. It would be rather concerning if that were not the case (one might, under such circumstances, have to suspect malice on the part of the authorities, as opposed to mere incompetence).

I'm not sure how instructive it is to look to public opinion – which, as you demonstrate, is often hopelessly confused – for moral guidance on this issue. But there is certainly something to be said for probing our intuitions, which, I think, support the idea that the ends don't always justify the means.

I suspect that by 'moral relativism' you mean consequentialism – of which utilitarianism is the commonest variety – and by 'moral objectivism' you mean moral absolutism. A concern solely for the consequences of an action is perfectly compatible with holding moral statements to be objective. (This is just a terminological point, but it helps to be clear).

I myself don't subscribe exclusively to either view; consequences matter, as do principles. How one weighs them against each other is a moot point.

Paul P. Your absurd response to points you can't reply to is always the same: "present a case I can answer", etc., etc.,. My comment couldn't have been clearer, even if I say so myself, much clearer than your extraordinarily incoherent contributions to this thread, particularly your post of 11:19 am today - as logically disjointed a piece of writing as I've seen in a very long time.

Colm. J: Thank you for your response. I think the problem lies in the fact that people aren't willing to suffer in the medium term in order to benefit in the long term and will always put off a painful decision. I think you can see this with the economy; printing money, borrowing and simply trying to continue the model that caused the problem will lead to another, worse crash, but sorting the problem out now means immediate hardship and we'd all rather suffer ten times as badly in the future than put up with the necessary pain now.

The Tories might be an iota less bad than Labour on certain issues - I'm not sure the military would agree with this - but by electing them we are not only continuing the cycle you mention but muddying the waters by allowing something called The Conservative Party to associate itself with the idea of being conservative. If it were to clearly fail, the medium term misery the country would suffer (most of which would be the lost pride of Tory supporters and nothing of real significance) would be worth the chance of allowing a proper conservative party to form. True, it might not happen, but as it stands, a few sips of the Tory brand of Diet-Labour are about the same as the Real Thing, so we've not really got much to lose.

"I do not believe that anyone has the right to take human life, other than in exceptional circumstances (war or self- defence spring to mind)."

To which I responded thus...

"The exceptional circumstances you mentioned above inferred a 'that sort of thing' component."

War or self defence sprang to your mind. In other words war or self defence, that sort of thing. Other things might have fit the bill is what you inferred, otherwise you would have said "in the exceptional circumstances of war and self-defence" instead of offering these as examples. "Exceptional circumstances" is a statement of generality. Nevertheless you felt moved to say this...

"As for the third paragraph, I "inferred" nothing, though you might have. I said, explicitly, not implicitly, that taking a human life is justified in certain circumstances and gave examples."

Certainly you were explicit in your condemnation of the taking of human life, but you were implicit in giving only examples of contrary justification.

Mr B, my comment to you in no way contained personal insults, nevertheless you felt moved to populate yours to me with such throughout, even including that I was "not man enough' to offer an apology for inferring from the tone of your comment that you objected to abortion for religious reasons. You said this...

"The travesty of abortion and the way the 1967 Act has been perverted to allow the mass slaughter of innocents, should make us think very hard before introducing similar measures in respect of euthanasia."

This is the tone and manner of expression one usually receives from the religious in respect of abortion. The secular with misgivings about abortion do not generally refer to the "travesty of abortion" or the "mass slaughter of innocents". If you are participating in this blog you must be aware that language of this kind will effect a presumption of religion. Knowing that you should have made your 'beliefs' clear from the outset, as others do.

If you wish to express opinions of an a-religious nature then you need to refrain from pejorative expressions of the emotive kind the religious habitually use when discussing abortion.

You really ought to read responses to your posts more carefully. You seem to be so obsessed with what you have to say that you refuse to consider what your opponent says. You also seem to think that you know what the other person is thinking. Care to guess what I'm thinking now?

You begin with a mistaken and rather arrogant presumption concerning my beliefs. (I would have expected an apology, but you are clearly not man enough to offer one.) When this is refuted, you then say that I hold life to be sacred when I have explicitly rejected that term in my previous post, because of its religious connotations.

The second paragraph of your most recent post is pseudo intellectual claptrap, devoid of meaning, and nothing more than a futile and blustering effort to dig yourself out of the hole in which you find yourself. Keep digging!

As for the third paragraph, I "inferred" nothing, though you might have. I said, explicitly, not implicitly, that taking a human life is justified in certain circumstances and gave examples. You try to reduce all argument to Absolutism and want to play around with semantics to avoid the point of the argument. However, you have to be very clever to do that and you, my friend, do not fit the bill.

"Many Tories think that however much they disagree with the Tories on social issues, labour would be even worse..."

I have a feeling that many more - from both sides - have always followed the good old standby of 'what's in it for me' when considering who to vote for. If that is not so, why do rates of tax appear so high in the advertising and media warfare that proceeds general elections?

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